Daily #F1 News and Comment: Wednesday 5th June 2013

The F1 media are today reporting a number of stories which relate to Red Bull’s designer, Adrian Newey. In the comments section last night, I hinted James Allison to Red Bull may be in the news. This was based upon an unconfirmed sighting from a ‘friend’ of TJ13 of someone who looked like Allison at the team facility in Milton Keynes earlier in the week.

As one reader noted recently, ‘F1 is not a village, it’s a street’ and outside of tyregate, the mystery surrounding Allison’s departure from Lotus and where he will go is the hot topic around the industry.

German F1 writer Michael Schmidt has written today of Allison, “Rumours are increasing that maybe he will go to Red Bull”, and that he will quit F1 at the end of next year. F1 aero design is likely to be less influential in 2014 in delivering a race and championship winning car. This may be because the new engines supplied by the 3 different manufacturers when tested on track, have more performance differentials than at present.

It is no secret that Newey is has become increasingly frustrated with the design regulations in Formula 1, such that in the FIA Press Conference in Barcelona he was still clearly irritated by the ‘double diffuser’ row which harks back to 2009. Red Bull played catchup all year to Brawn but never quite made up for the design feature on the Brawn which won Button 6 of the first 7 races that season.

Red Bull and Ferrari still appear to be the obvious choices for Allison, and Red Bull would not upset their management structure by making him a financial offer way in excess anything the other teams would be prepared to match.

Bridgestone

As TJ13 reported last week, Paul Hembery agreed that it was getting very late for another tyre company to be ready to produce tyres for F1 in 2014. Hankook ruled themselves out last week and today Bridgestone have spoen on the matter too.

“We have no current plans to re-enter F1,” a Bridgestone spokesperson is reported saying by Autosport. “Since our participation in F1, Bridgestone has achieved a significant improvement in brand awareness in Europe and in other areas all over the world.

At the same time, Bridgestone was successful in applying the technologies for compounds, design, and simulation for F1 tyres for the development of passenger car tires. We can say that the participation of Bridgestone in F1 for 14 years was very significant.

Under the current business environment which is continuously changing, Bridgestone focused on the need to redirect its resources towards the further intensive development of those innovative technologies and strategic products, and decided not to re-enter into a new tire supply contract after the expiration of the contract at the end of the 2010 season.”

So as TJ13’s last episode of ‘F1 days of our lives’ suggested, the only real other option left would be Michelin. If they refuse to play ball then Pirelli can write their own terms and conditions for their renewed contract and neither the FIA, Bernie or the teams can refuse their demands.

Canada can be dangerous

Stirling Moss’s comments have been debated hotly this year but as TJ13 readers comments, these views may well have been formed in an era where, “death truly did lurk at each corner”. Here are a couple of video clips which demonstrate that motor racing is indeed a dangerous sport and for Paletti Riccardo it cost him his life.

For Kubica the car design had clearly progressed significantly when we see this horrific but not fatal incident

Mercedes Barcelona Test

A TJ13 source sent us this interesting information. It is unconfirmed… however… Spanish law requires that there is an ambulance and a trauma helicopter presence whenever there’s activity on track. Mercedes allegedly paid the Montmelo circuit an incremental sum to so the team could provide the medical personnel and equipment for the test.

Remedial work on the circuit perimeter was carried out prior to the test and a security company was hired to monitor and control the surroundings of the circuit. Apparently, Rosberg and Hamilton were asked to wear neutral helmets and Michael Schumacher was also present.

Of course it is fairly certain Lewis let something slip in the driver’s briefing in Monaco, which Vettel picked up on and headed straight off to Helmet’s VW camper van and spilled the beans about the Mercedes Barcelona test. Let’s hope we see Lewis announced as part of the driver’s FIA conference scheduled for the Canadian GP.

More interestingly, Lewis Hamilton issued the following tweet on May 16th with the associated picture. The test took place between the 15th and 17th of May. Lewis confirmed last week he took part in the Pirelli test and ‘it was a lot of fun’.

Barcelona is 6 hours ahead of Orlando and whilst not impossible, would Lewis take an overnight transatlantic flight to arrive in the morning for a test in Montmelo?

2014 in season testing
TJ13 reported that the teams met in Barcelona and there was no agreement to increase the number of test days in 2014. They did agree have the ruling removed which prevented testing before February 1st and also agreed a test could be performed outside Europe.

However, things have changed since then as Italian publication La Gazzetta della Sport writes that Christian Horner confirms agreement was reached on 4, 2 day in season tests for 2014 during the Monaco GP weekend. These will all take place during the European leg of the calendar and locations are yet to be confirmed.

43 responses to “Daily #F1 News and Comment: Wednesday 5th June 2013”

I still remember watching the Montreal GP live and noticing towards the end of the crush that Robert’s arms/body seemed to relax and stop moving. I genuinely thought I was witnessing another F1 fatality. That moment is not visible in this clip.

As for Adrian, would love to see him go back to Williams. That would make me very happy. Although they should put something in his contract about not being allowed to race cars on his off weekends.

Exactly, if you follow Lewis tweets, you often get random pictures out of sync, especially when they relate to his personal life, this week was another example of that with several tweets of past events.

As TJ said, maybe RBR is offering less than Ferrari so he goes that way. Having said that, Toro Rosso could be a destination as well. The question is then, what will they do with James Key… will James then join RBR as they have seen his work at STR?

This is getting as interesting as trying to guess where the drivers go each year!

This whole Mercedes test is starting to look like a B-rated soap opera. Even if there was no underhanded trickery involved (which looks increasingly unlikely) they sure invested a lot of effort to make it look like it.
Really confirms what I have learned in 15 years in IT business. The biggest corporations make the most brain-dead decisions.

I’ve been wondering who spilled the beans on that test… I recall someone saying that another supplier (not Pirelli) accidentally said something Saturday.

Interesting about the medical team in Barcelona… It appears that Pirelli was playing a big poker hand as part of their contract renewal negotiations, while Mercedes was hoping this test would remain secret from the other teams for many more months. Good luck to both of them… lol!

I don’t know if you are being serious about them using the new turbo engines…..but, would that be disallowed under the regulations? They must have developed the engines by now, and it makes sense for Pirelli to want to test their tyres using the new powertrain. Have Mercedes pulled a really fast one with this? (If you excuse the pun)

I’m almost thinking of an even bigger conspiracy😉 Mercedes knew very well that the test was illegal, if they would get away with it, fine, i they wouldn’t, it would just speed up the process of Mercedes pulling out of F1 and selling the team to Ladau and Wolff, who already have 40%.
Dr. Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt Integrity & Legal Affairs Chief and Member of Management Board at Daimler AG made it very clear that in case Bernie gets convicted they might be forced to pull out,
That’s why Bernie was so eager to get Wolff and Lauda to join Mercedes, to make sure there was a plan B methinks.
It seems their integrity clause backfires on them, now they’re the ones lacking integrity.

Because Daimlers integrity and legal affairs department have inserted an exit clause relating to corruption in their contract with F1.
Dr. Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt Integrity & Legal Affairs Chief is quoted: “We would utilise the contract terms when it is necessary”

That’s why i was wondering, what happens if they’re the ones that made a faux pas?

Not surprised Lewis spilled the beans. He has a big mouth. However, how can you not know something is up when MGP is the only team not packing up after the GP? I think Pirelli asked MGP to test because they were the toughest car on the tires. If the tires could last on the Merc then the rest of the field would have a better wear rate on the tires as well. Red Bull is just upset that they were not asked, but who cares? Tempest in a teacup!

Yes, agreed about a tempest in a teacup. Too bad it went to IT, such a waste.

As an aside, the quality of work by our friends at autosport.com may be degrading… They’ve just posted an article by Mr. Glenn Freeman stating that the “FIA had been waiting for a report from the Monaco stewards before deciding if Mercedes had a case to answer”… That goes beyond the realm of a typo to the realm of misunderstanding the process that they’re reporting about. It’s a bit embarrassing to see that.

1) Monaco Grand Prix Stewards reported to the FIA the complaint from RB and Ferrari on May 26th.
2) The FIA prosecuting body then investigated the claims, and stated their conclusion on June 6th, (http://bit.ly/11igpwP ).

As true F1 fans I am sure we have all viewed many scraps of film showing the spectacular crashes of the decades, but this one of Riccardo is unspeakable, I feel quite traumatised, I know it is most unlikely to ever happen now, but the spectre is always there . . . maybe the young hotheads should be made to watch a compilation before each race !!